Members of the Steering Group are collaborating with Drewry to share confidential vessel operating costs data across their managed fleet in return for participation in Drewry’s benchmarking and best practice sharing services. Launch members include: Hong Kong’s Fleet Management; London-based V.Ships; Cyprus domiciled Columbia Shipmanagement; Wallem Group based in Hong Kong; Singapore-based Executive Ship Management, MSI Ship Management and Union Marine Management Services; and ASP Ships Group headquartered in Australia.

Drewry has been publishing annual assessments of vessel operating costs for over 40 years in its flagship Ship Operating Costs Annual Review & Forecast report, which now covers 47 different vessel types and sizes across all the main cargo carrying segments. The method for deriving these assessments has developed over the years but has always been broadly holistic, combining data from vessel operators with information extracted from audited financial reports of listed companies and input from subject matter experts on particular cost heads or vessel types.

“The formation of the Steering Group enables Drewry to expand its sample size of vessel opex data across a wider range of ship types and sizes,” said Martin Dixon, Director of Research Products at Drewry. “Information received from members will be combined with existing sourced data and audited against information published in the financial accounts of listed companies we well as Drewry subject matter expert review.”

Drewry estimates that 15% of the world merchant deep-sea fleet is managed by third-party shipmanagers. Its Steering Group includes half of the world’s top 10 shipmanagers by size of fleet under technical management.

“We are delighted to be collaborating with Drewry and other Steering Group members on this initiative,” commented Kishore Rajvanshy, Managing Director at Fleet Management. “This strategic industry partnership puts us in a stronger position to evaluate the competitiveness of our operations, while also driving further growth and innovation for our industry and ultimately, create new value for our clients.”

“V.Ships is pleased to be participating in this new Steering Group and looks forward to collaborating with Drewry and other shipmanagers to improve transparency of vessel operating costs and share best practices,” said Bjoern Sprotte, CEO Ship Management at V.Ships. “We have always considered benchmarking an important discipline to help ensure our clients receive the best possible balance of service and value for money.”

The 2021 edition of Drewry’s Ship Operating Costs Annual Review & Forecast report will be published in October.